


The dragon in the dark

by FeralCreed



Category: X-Men (Comicverse), X-Men (Movieverse), X-Men - All Media Types
Genre: Angst, Drama, Erik is a Father, Erik is not a Happy Bunny, L2R, M/M, all that good shit, rp post that turned into fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-11
Updated: 2017-08-11
Packaged: 2018-12-13 23:07:31
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,152
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11770350
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FeralCreed/pseuds/FeralCreed
Summary: So on a jcink board where I rp Erik, there's a thread going on where Henry Gyrich kidnapped his daughter Lorna as revenge for Erik being involved in killing Gyrich's son back in the day. Lorna is put in a cell set up like the Nazi gas chambers and Erik is sent a video of her being gassed (into unconsciousness, but Erik of course presumes it's to her death). This is Erik's reaction. He's an idiot.





	The dragon in the dark

Erik had, naturally, worried extensively over the fact that Lorna wanted to take a plane home for Christmas. He'd made her promise to give his phone number to the Danes in case something happened, had tightly hugged her goodbye, and had proceeded to worry about her. She hadn't texted him at the time her flight was due to land, and then the Danes had called him saying that she'd never arrived at the airport. That had proceeded to blow his concern into panic, and so the noise of a text from Lorna was a more than welcome distraction considering he was just standing in front of the window in his and Charles' bedroom.

When he sees no words, only a video file, he freezes for a moment. It's simply paranoia and suspicion, he tells himself. There's nothing wrong. Nothing wrong. He opens the attachment and promptly forgets to breathe. "Lorna," he whispers, even though she can't possibly hear him. "Oh, god,  _Lorna."_   But she doesn't seem harmed physically, she isn't bloodied or wounded, and she moves freely when she gets up.

But she rises only to beat at the door and scream for her life. Erik chokes and drops to his knees, fingers clenching far too tightly around his mobile.  _No, no, no, no, god, please, no, don't take her from me._ He'd lost every other firstborn daughter when they were young, he'd thought he'd be able to have a life with Lorna, thought he could love her and keep her safe. Only for her to... to...

He clutches the phone to his chest and screams. He screams the hoarse and wounded cry of a dying animal, shoulders shaking as he loses his voice to harsh sobs. It's hard to think, to do anything, with the fog clouding his brain. Someone is giving an awful, choking, laugh-like sound. It's him, he realises. He sounds like he's laughing at his daughter's death, like it's a victory that his humanity is laying in bleeding and broken pieces. As if his beloved baby girl having died like he'd killed so many in the War was a good thing.

 _"The quality of mercy. Did my son beg_  you,  _Lehnsherr?"_ the voice in the recording asks.

His powers destroy. He can feel each bit of metal in the room, in the rooms around him. They're pulled to him, to his body, before violently exploding outward. Pieces stab through the walls and door and windows, glass shards scattering across the carpet and scratching against his shoulder. God only knows how much of the school he just destroyed, but he doesn't care, he can't. Some sick son of a bitch murdered his baby girl, in a way meant to remind him of his past, and sent him the video.

Erik's trembling, and he can feel the wild maelstrom of grief and pain and rage and  _burn it to the ground_  that's so goddamn familiar. Like when he lost Anya and Magda, Nina and Magda, thought he'd lost Charles, pieces of his soul crumbling away to dust. It had been so hard to find any silver lining to the situation, to try to find a reason to stay human. He'd lost every person that he had loved, but there were still tender strands trying to tether him to what he'd once had.

Something gruesome and dangerous had slashed through the last tendrils that had tried to hold on, and he'd embraced the monster. He'd destroyed those who had tried to destroy him. Reached into the dark to grab what should have remained unseen, to find possibility and freedom. The mutant who had existed before returned, reorienting to the darkness and the real world of nightmares, as it had existed before he first believed in a fool's optimistic dream. He'd laughed into the void and clenched his bloody hands and teeth into fists and snarls. A monster's visage, white bone below reddened flesh turned black with viscera. He became the dragon in the dark, the reason men warned their children to never stray from home in the night, and he had called it his birthright. Whatever and whoever he found, he was good at weaponising that and making a tool of it without feeling beholden. And through his struggling, he'd smiled, because he was crazy and he'd been pleased with the fear of the world. He had embraced the likelihood of death only to fuck it over, to survive and grow more dangerous in his strength.

He'd become Magneto, a whisper in the darkness, a curse in the light. And he had held onto it with both hands, pulled what he wanted from the ashes of a life he knew he no longer deserved. Been unwilling to give it up for anything that crossed his path... until Charles. Until warm hands and a warmer smile, until acceptance, until a quietly murmured  _you will always have a home, my friend._  Erik had finally, slowly, let Charles understand his history and remove his mantle. He'd allowed himself to love again and had been rewarded, had found four beautiful children and an even more beautiful man he would want to  _marry_  one day if Charles accepted his offer.

Yet his daughter - his Lorna - his firstborn had been murdered. Had been destroyed with no more decency or thought than a rabid animal. And how was he to accept this? To simply look at the destruction of a bright smile and shining eyes and then look away, shrug, and prepare a few words for her funeral? Erik would not just stand there and speak of his love for his child without actions accompanying it.

And Charles, oh, god, Charles. He had loved her too, loved her as if she were his own. In a way, she had been, in the same way that Pietro and Wanda and Chris were Charles' children, in the same way that all the students were Erik's children in a sense, as well. But how was he to tell his sun that one of the brightest stars in his sky had burned out suddenly, viciously, for no other reason than a cruel man's pleasure? How did he tell his Charles that Lorna had been killed on the whims of some fucking human, just for being his blood? He's still sobbing, gasps rasping harshly, but it doesn't matter,  _nothing matters_ , because his little girl... His little girl is dead. 

Erik hadn't known Lorna had died until now. And Charles couldn't. Erik Lehnsherr, a grieving father, had dropped to his knees and screamed and sobbed and twisted all the metal in the room into crumpled shapes. Magneto rose on steady feet, with shaking hands, and brought the helmet to him so that the man who had killed his daughter could die as slowly as he could make him. "I'm sorry, Charles," he said, and left before the telepath could ask if he meant it. 


End file.
